Samsung's 'prepped' witness angers judge in final day of patent trial testimony

On the last day of testimony in the Apple v. Samsung patent trial, Samsung counsel and its final expert witness were berated by presiding Judge Lucy Koh over possible coaching on what to say regarding claim construction of a contentious Apple patent.

Apple and Samsung met in court on Monday to hash out the definition of a claim relating to Apple's '647 patent covering data detectors. Specifically, Apple's definition of "analyzer servers" as presented in Apple v. Samsung differs from a ruling handed down by the Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit last week that overturned the dismissal of a separate action involving Apple and Motorola.

In its ruling, the CAFC sided with Judge Richard A. Posner's interpretation of analyzer servers, not Apple's version as argued in the trial against Samsung. Since Judge Koh allowed Apple to assert the patent and its claim construction, she granted both parties an hour of time and one witness each to clarify the patent in an extension to proceedings.

To counter, Samsung recalled University of North Carolina professor Kevin Jeffay. In his testimony, Jeffay said he held a particular interpretation of the analyzer server —one incongruent with Apple's definition —but claimed the court ordered him not to discuss it. Judge Koh was not pleased.

According to tweets from mLex correspondent Mike Swift, the jurist did not appreciate "that Samsung 'prepped' Jeffay to say he was blocked from using correct construction." Judge Koh ultimately struck his statements from the record, adding that the expert's deposition was "very inconsistent."

Samsung was charged for the time, limiting Jeffay's testimony to a non-infringement argument based largely on prior art in the form of Borland's Sidekick software first launched on MS-DOS in 1984.

Apple and Samsung will present closing arguments on Tuesday, after which jurors will deliberate and render a verdict as per a 53-page set of finalized instructions handed out earlier today.